A way to make classical music straightforward: When the workday is over but the evening has not quite begun – there’s time for music then. More exactly: for 40 minutes of music. Always at 18.20, before the “big event” symphony concerts, selected Festival artists are presented in the 40min series. Admission is free, there’s no dress code, and prior knowledge is unnecessary. For the artists not only make music but also take on the role of host and talk about what they’re playing and why they play it the way they do. Have a taste!

Since it was founded in 2003, more than 1,200 instrumentalists, conductors, and composers from over 60 countries have taken part in the LUCERNE FESTIVAL ACADEMY. Its graduates have included such renowned artists as the JACK and the Mivos Quartets and the conductors Pablo Heras-Casado and Kevin John Edusei, as well as many musicians who today have careers as members of internationally renowned orchestras, perform in the field of chamber music and experimental projects, or teach at universities. Most of them remain closely associated with the Festival. As LUCERNE FESTIVAL ALUMNI, selected former Academy students regularly return to Lucerne, enriching the programming through performances in the area of contemporary music, participation in the 40min series, or collaborations in productions by LUCERNE FESTIVAL YOUNG, as well as by providing advice and support to current Academy students. Aided by the Alumni platform, they also stay in contact with each other in order to collaboratively realize their own projects worldwide. This has created a unique international network of young musicians. The first project presented by the Alumni was in the 2013-14 season under the motto “Music at Risk” and involved four world premieres in New York, London, Beijing, Zurich, and Lucerne. One of the highlights of recent years has been the three-part concert series “Ligeti Forward,” with which the Alumni made a guest appearance at the NY Phil Biennial in 2016 under the direction of Alan Gilbert. In 2017 they toured Germany and Switzerland with the Swiss jazz singer Andreas Schaerer, his band Hildegard Lernt Fliegen, and the project titled “The Big Wig.” And in March 2018 they joined with the Ensemble intercontemporain to perform Messiaen’s Des canyons aux étoiles in Paris, Brussels, and Luxembourg, as well as at the Easter Festival in Lucerne.

First appearance at LUCERNE FESTIVAL on 3 September 2014 in the “Music at Risk” project.

Riccardo Chailly has been Music Director of the LUCERNE FESTIVAL ORCHESTRA since 2016. Born in 1953 in Milan, he studied at the Conservatories of Perugia, Rome, and Milan and at the Accademia Musicale Chigiana and began his career as an assistant to Claudio Abbado at La Scala in Milan. Chailly was appointed Music Director of the Berlin Radio Symphony Orchestra in 1980, and in 1988 he took up the same position with the Royal Concertgebouw Orchestra Amsterdam, which he helmed for sixteen years. From 2005 to the summer of 2016, Riccardo Chailly served as head of the Leipzig Gewandhaus Orchestra. He has been Music Director of La Scala in Milan since January 2015. Chailly regularly conducts such leading European orchestras as the Berlin and Vienna Philharmonics, the Bavarian Radio Symphony Orchestra, the London Symphony Orchestra, and the Orchestre de Paris. In the United States, he has worked with the New York Philharmonic, the Cleveland and Philadelphia Orchestras, and the Chicago Symphony Orchestra. As an opera conductor – in addition to his performances at La Scala – he has appeared at the Metropolitan Opera in New York, the Royal Opera House in London, Zurich Opera, the Bavarian and Vienna Staatsoper companies, Chicago Lyric Opera, and San Francisco Opera. Riccardo Chailly has received many prizes for his more than 150 CDs, including Gramophone’s Record of the Year Award for his account of the Brahms symphonies. In the fall of 2019, he will release an album of three Strauss tone poems with the LUCERNE FESTIVAL ORCHESTRA. Riccardo Chailly is a Grand’Ufficiale della Repubblica Italiana, a Cavaliere di Gran Croce, and a Knight in the Order of the Netherlands Lion. In 1996 he was made an Honorary Member of the Royal Academy of Music in London, and he has been an Officier de l’Ordre des Arts et des Lettres in France since 2011.

LUCERNE FESTIVAL (IMF) debut on 7 September 1988 with the Royal Concertgebouw Orchestra Amsterdam in a program of works by Wagner, Mozart, and Tchaikovsky

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